Photos by me, with a bit of chat.

Category: Wildlife; mammals

Christmas came early this morning, a lovely sunrise and another Otter.

I was up early and on site just as it was getting light… this was a shot taken with full ISO and thus very grainy… The most likely time to see an otter is just as it is getting light or just as it is getting dark, which is the worst time for the camera.

By the way no Otter in the photo above it is just there to show what sort of picture you get immediately after sunrise.

I was scanning the far sides of the lake with my binoculars when suddenly there was a loud splash in the weedy water not 10 meters away from me. My first thoughts was maybe a large fish had surfaced. Then the Otter popped up right in front of me and now about 50 meters out. I desperately tried to focus but with my insulated gloves on it was all a bit of a fumble.

It dived and then reappeared further out, now I had yanked my gloves off and was better able to focus. Again it only had a quick look round and then disappeared off to the left behind some reed beds. I waited a short while but no more views so I slowly walked back along the bank and then I saw it again, now right across the lake and it moved across and then out of view.

I remained by the lake for about an hour, the sunrise produced some nice colours on the trees and reed beds but with only a telephoto lens I was limited in what I could snap away at.

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A young Swan came up close, maybe expecting me to feed it and when that did not happen it gave me a good loud hiss and then swam off. Also at the lake were a few Grey-lag Geese, two pairs of Mallards some Coots and that was about it.

Next challenge is to get a shot of an Otter out of the water.. maybe sat on a rock in the middle of the river Wye eating a salmon….. now that really would be Christmas come early.

Having spotted an Otter on Thursday I was encouraged so spent Saturday afternoon and most of today, Sunday at the same place hoping for some better views. No luck, it did show for literally two seconds on Saturday. Just surfaced and dived, never to be seen again.

It rained most of the time so I took a couple of rainy shots.

There is not a lot of bird life at this reserve, Mallards and Teal, mostly. I did see some Little Egrets on my first visit but none this weekend. Also on that occasion a Kingfisher did a quick fly past. I did spot one Gadwall, and in the bushes behind the hide I snapped this Goldcrest, I had hoped it might be a Fire crest as its crest was quite Fiery but after cropping the photo to get a close look I could see there was no eye stripe, so it is just a Goldcrest….still nice though.

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There are quite a few Little Grebes and they are quite photogenic so I took a few shots of them when they came close to the hide.

I also had the company of a Rat, not shy at all. Despite being a rat he/she also looked a bit ratty as in disheveled and tatty sort of way. I took sympathy and gave it a few bits of my lunch… Nan bread with bacon filling, it seemed fairly happy with it and came quite close, about a foot away at which point I did shuffle my feet noisily to warn it off. It was all said and done a rat.

After many many hours at various locations along the river Wye, in the forest of Dean and in darkest Wales, I was finally rewarded with about 60 seconds of Otter just before it got dark. I am not complaining, it was absolutely magical.

I have seen Otters several times in the past but this was the first time since moving to Gloucestershire. This otter is a Welsh otter…. nothing wrong with that.

I got the tip off that it might be about when suddenly all the ducks that were settling in the reed beds for the night took off.

The otter then appeared on the far side of the lake where I was sat, freezing my nuts off in a sort of open hide… if that makes any sense. It had two sides and was open on the sides away from the lake, some of you will know where I was from that description. I had to use ISO 16,000 as it was so dark and I was using a 400 mm zoom lens. Thus the photo quality is not 100%.

Most of the time it was swimming underwater and only surfaced a couple of times. It did do a nice dive and this produced the ‘ring of bright water as in the book title.

Two groups of grazing animals have been introduced onto an area of the Forest of Dean to maintain the heath land habitat.

They also add to the photographic interest of this region. Already we have Wild Boar, Roe Deer, Fallow Deer and Muntjac Deer. Recently Beavers were released and maybe soon Pine Martens. Oh yes and Otters and Polecats and various small stuff.

As I said in my last post we do get Wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) in the garden sometimes and today he/she made an appearance. Also know as a Field mouse, because they live in the woods and the fields.

It might have been better to call them the country mouse as opposed to the town mouse. These little chaps are not the ones you get in the house. These live outside, they have bigger eyes and bigger ears and they are delightful.